The Woman in the Library

The police interview all four of the friends separately, and they keep Cain the longest. Freddie finds her interview to be “emotionless, a simple gathering of facts—dates, times, locations. […] simply punching in information. [She] get[s] the feeling that [she has] become part of a process, absorbed into the machinery of the investigation” (56). The police keep their phones, forcing them to buy new ones and get new numbers.

The three friends return to Freddie’s apartment for dinner and more bonding as they discuss the facts of the case. Marigold speculates on the psychology of the killer, but this conversation upsets Cain, who snaps at her that the three of them working at determining the killer’s identity is something out of the crime/procedural drama Criminal Minds. He comforts her after she gets upset. The three suspect that the person who sent the pictures is either involved in the killing or trying to warn Freddie that she is in danger. Marigold reveals that she went by Whit’s house five times without going in, behavior that is concerning. Cain quips that sending pictures may mean the person who sent the pictures is older and doesn’t know how to text.

Leo A writes to Hannah and chides her for not having gotten back to him. He is worried that the Australian bushfires may have gotten her, a fate he paints in vivid detail. Leo A prods Hannah to say whether Hannah’s publisher has gotten back to her about possibly publishing Leo A’s manuscript.

The three friends buy doughnuts at trendy Around the Hole Doughnuts and go to the hospital to visit Whit. They encounter Whit’s mother, Jean Metter, discussing something to do with the case, and there are two FBI agents in the room when they arrive. Cain splits from the group when he sees the FBI agents but comes around once they leave. Once in the room, Freddie, Marigold, Cain, and Whit discuss what they know so far about the case. They get into a guessing game about each other’s ages. It turns out that Cain is 30 years old, Freddie is 27, and the other two are in their early twenties. The FBI agents were questioning Whit about whether Whit once knew Cain by another name. Cain tells the three friends that “Cain McLeod” is a pen name. His real name is Abel Manners. They laugh at his name. They leave the room when Whit breaks a stitch laughing.

In his email, Leo A gives more advice and notes to Hannah, including some names of possible doughnut shops aside from Dunkin’ Donuts. He advises her that Whit and Marigold are not likely to be pursuing graduate degrees in their very early twenties, especially Whit. Leo A tells Hannah it is not her fault Hannah’s agent won’t accept his novel and represent him.

Whit’s father tells them Jean doesn’t want them visiting Whit anymore. The group departs, and Freddie makes her way back to her apartment to do some writing. On the way there, Leo B runs her down and says he just happened to see her. She is surprised by how agile his running is, especially since she has always thought of him as a little bit older. He arranges for them to eat at his place that night. Freddie gets in a little more writing, and then she goes over to Leo B’s place. They eat pizza and end up discussing writing. Leo B contends that all writing in one form or another is a romance because all writing is about relationships. Freddie reads through his work in progress, and she is impressed by how beautiful the writing is in patches. She leaves, and there is awkwardness as they part. She realizes that Leo B is probably attracted to her.

In an email to Hannah, Leo A writes that he is very appreciative that Freddie has included him as a character, and he hopes that his own writing has inspired the description of Leo B’s writing in the book. He also shares that the agent who rejected his manuscript mysteriously died. He says that it is ironic that “days ago she was vibrant and mighty, she had the power to realize or kill dreams, and today she herself is dead” (78).

Freddie receives a second box of grocery deliveries. Cain and Marigold deny they sent it. She feels spooked, so she asks the doorman to keep an eye out for strangers at her building. She goes out on a date with Cain that night. They go to a movie and dinner. Cain shares more about his difficult childhood. His father died, and his mother remarried when Cain was eight. Cain’s stepfather was unkind to him. When Cain was a teen, he ran away from the family home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and landed in Boston.

Cain and Freddie also discuss whether it is possible to still enjoy a piece of art like The Birds, the Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Tippi Hedren, when Tippi alleged that Hitchcock sexually assaulted her during filming. Cain doesn’t believe the morality of the creator should make any difference in the reception of their creations, but Freddie is less certain. They are out eating after the film when Marigold turns up, claiming the encounter is by chance. Freddie believes Marigold is stalking them.

Leo A writes that he hears Australia has closed its borders due to the COVID pandemic. He suspects the research trip he hoped Hannah would make to the United States is canceled. He gives Hannah more notes on making her characters realistic. Since Cain is from North Carolina, Hannah should be sure to include Southern idioms like “joint” instead of “restaurant” and “yonder” and “y’all” in his speech (85). He writes about American democracy dying and the world turning into a dystopia, but he says the idea intrigues rather than depresses him. He finds it "alluring” (85) that Marigold might be a stalker. The possibility makes him love her even more as a character.

Marigold appears not to see them as she goes to the counter to pay for her food. When they approach her, she claims she comes to the restaurant all the time. She tells them she walked past Whit’s house several times because she was worried about him, but she never knocked on the door. Cain and Freddie warn her that this behavior looks suspicious during a murder and stabbing investigation. She gets upset. She tells them that Caroline Palfrey, the victim from the library, worked at The Rag and that Whit has done extensive work for the paper, despite telling them otherwise. She volunteers to do research on Isaac Harmon, the subject of Cain’s book. After she keeps insisting, Cain says he’d rather she didn’t do it since he wants to preserve Isaac’s privacy and because his book is “a novel, not an autobiography” (91).

Because they are worried about her safety, Cain and Freddie take Marigold to her apartment, which is in a rather nice, older part of Boston. Cain has to retrieve his car first because it is “over yonder” (91) at the Brattle Theatre, he says. When the three arrive at Marigold’s apartment, Cain and Freddie leave quickly because her half-clothed roommate is there and angry that the food took so long. Cain asks Freddie if she really believes it was a coincidence that Marigold showed up where they were. He is not so sure. He’s also surprised that Marigold did not mention before that she had a roommate. Freddie is still giving Marigold the benefit of the doubt on the question of who stabbed Whit. When they exit Marigold’s apartment, an old friend of Cain’s called Boo (also known as Shaun Jacobs) is standing by Cain’s Jeep. He tells them that someone has slashed Cain’s “tyre” (93).

In his email to Hannah, Leo A points out a few Australian words in the dialogue (but not all of them, such as the American Boo using “tyre” in place of “tire”). He writes that he is making masks to wear and loves the anonymity they grant him. He tells her that the idea of an unclothed man in Marigold’s apartment is very appealing to him.

Cain changes the tire, which he pulls from the “boot” (96; the word appears in the description rather than the dialogue). Boo shoves him for approaching him from the left since (he claims) that is how murderers do it. Cain gives him money, and Boo says he will see Cain at the library. Cain met Boo during Cain’s teenage years when Cain ran away from home, and Boo also knew Isaac. Isaac told Cain to be wary of Boo, who has paranoid fantasies, but Boo is providing Cain with needed information about Isaac as Cain researches material for his novel. Boo returns and is agitated or high. He tells Freddie to be wary of Cain because she doesn’t know what Cain has done. Boo claims he did exactly what was asked of him by stabbing downward and back toward the spine, but he doesn’t want to do it again because there is always retribution when you hurt people.

Cain gives something to Boo, but Boo hits Cain on the head with a glass bottle and runs away. Cain stops Freddie from calling for an ambulance and the police because he doesn’t have medical insurance and doesn’t want to get Boo in trouble. Against her better judgment, Freddie takes Cain back to her apartment. One of the nosy women downstairs, Mrs. Weinbaum, turns out to be a retired doctor. She treats and closes the wound on Cain’s head.

Leo A gives feedback. People from North Carolina also use the term “boot” to refer to a car trunk, so it is fine for Hannah to use that word. He is also shocked that Cain does not have health insurance, especially since he claims that writers can get health insurance through writers’ associations. Perhaps Cain has a pre-existing condition. He tells her that the pandemic in Boston has escalated, but it isn’t as bad as New York. Boston’s streets are empty, and Leo A loves that. He is “writing more fluidly than ever. Perhaps [his] muse is fear” (102).

Cain and Freddie kiss, but Freddie refuses to make love with Cain because she worries he has a concussion. He goes to sleep in her bed, and she stays up to write. Two lawyers from the estate of Mrs. Weinbaum’s late husband show up. Although her husband was a doctor, she is not. She’s just under the delusion that she is one. The two lawyers get Cain to sign a waiver saying he will not sue her, and they give him contact information for a doctor who can take care of any cosmetic problems left by Mrs. Weinbaum’s amateur work. Cain asks detailed questions about how Mrs. Weinbaum’s delusions work. When they ask why he is curious, Cain tells them he’s a writer. They remind him that there is a confidentiality clause in the waiver he just signed. He replies that he is “a novelist […], not a reporter” and the “confidentiality clause does not preclude [him] using [their] client as inspiration” (109).

In his email, Leo A writes that this whole scene is something like a melodrama, and he is really enjoying it. He also tells Hannah that he went into a seedy bar the previous night to write in a setting that would make him feel like Ernest Hemingway. There was a fight, and one of the brawlers took a blow to the head with a bottle. Leo A has photos he took on Hannah’s behalf in case she wants to add details about Cain’s wound. “The shards caught the light and glinted in the blood” in the man’s wound (109-10).